Cluster Bombs: Saudi Use, USA Sales, and the Review
Cluster Bombs: Saudi Use, USA Sales, and the Review
Conference on their Prohibition
Monday, May 4,
2015
René Wadlow, President and a
Representative to the United Nations (Geneva)
Association of World
Citizens
The Saudi-led
aggression on Yemen has on at least two separate occasions
used cluster bombs to attack villages in Yemen's northern
Saada Province according to a report of the nongovernmental
organization Human Rights Watch. Cluster munitions
are imprecise weapons which often fail to detonate on
impact, leaving the unexploded bomb lets on the ground,
ready to kill or maim when disturbed or handled.
The
failure rate of cluster munitions is high, ranging from 30
to 80 percent. But “failure” may be the wrong word.
They may, in fact, designed to kill later. Reports from
humanitarian organizations and mine-clearing groups have
shown that civilians make up the vast majority of the
victims of cluster bombs, especially children attracted by
their small size and often bright colors.
Cluster weapons
had been largely used by USA forces during the Vietnam War,
especially along the No Chi Minh Trail in Laos, Cambodia,
and Vietnam. The impact is still being felt, and much land
is unfit for cultivation. (1)
The revulsion at the
consequences and long-lasting impact led to the start of
negotiations in Geneva leading to theConvention on Prohibition on the Use of
Certain Conventional Weapons which may be Deemed to be
Excessively Injurious or to have Indiscriminate Effects
called by its friends “the 1980 Inhumane Weapons
Convention.”
My NGO text presented during the
negotiations in August 1979 for the Citizens of the World on
“Anti-Personnel Fragmentation Weapons” called for a ban
based on the 1868 St Petersburg Declaration at the time
the only law of war standard which seemed to apply. As I
have been concerned with investigation and judgment on
violations of the laws of war, I recommended that
“permanent verification and dispute-settlement procedures
be established which may investigate all charges of the use
of prohibited weapons whether in inter-State or internal
conflicts and that such a permanent body include a
consultative committee of experts who could begin their work
without a prior resolution of the UN Security Council.”
The procedures I proposed were drawn from the 1976
negotiations on the convention to ban the use of
environmental modification techniques for military or other
hostile purposes.
The 1980 Inhumane Weapons Convention
was to be a “framework” convention, and prohibitions on
specific inhumane and indiscriminate weapons were to be
negotiated separately, with investigation procedures, if
any, to be negotiated for each weapon. Thus the cluster
bomb issue was set aside as memories of the Vietnam War
faded from the disarmament agenda.
Unfortunately,
governments like world public opinion react only when faced
by a crisis. Thus cluster bombs returned to the world agenda
as a justified reaction to the wide use by Israel in south
Lebanon during July-August 2006. It is estimated by theUN Mine
Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) that one million
cluster bombs were fired on south Lebanon during the 34 days
of war, many during the last two days of war when a
ceasefire was a real possibility. The Hezbollah militia also
shot off rockets with cluster bombs into northern Israel. It
was this indiscriminate use of cluster bombs against Lebanon
in a particularly senseless and inconclusive war that
finally led to a sustained effort for a ban on cluster
weapons.
In a remarkable combination of civil society
pressure and leadership from a small number of progressive
States a strong 2008Convention on Cluster Munitions was
drafted. It prohibits production, transfer, stockpiling and
use of cluster munitions. The Convention also reacquires the
destruction of stockpiles, clearance of areas contaminated
by remnants and victim assistance.
The inspection,
investigation, dispute settlement aspects of the Convention
are weak. It was hoped that the treaty's unequivocal
language was so strong that even countries refusing to sign
the Convention would be reluctant to use the weapon. Saudi
Arabia, Yemen and the USA have all refused to sign the
Convention. Thus the use by Saudi Arabia of cluster bombs in
Yemen and the sale of cluster weapons to Saudi Arabia by the
USA is legal. Some 90 States have ratified the Convention,
and 26 have signed but not yet ratified.
I would argue
that the large number of ratifications and the general
framework of humanitarian law make the use and sale of
cluster munitions a violation of world law. For world
citizens, “world law” is the law and values of the world
community which go beyond “international law” which is
treaty law between two or more States.
Because the world
situations which lead to disarmament agreements keep
changing, and appreciations by governments of what is
“world law” keep evolving, as with the Treaty on the
Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, a five-year-interval
Review Conference was included in the cluster-weapon ban
convention. The Review Conference will be held in September
2015 in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
The meeting of the
Preparatory Commission for the Review Conference will start
meeting on 24 June at the United Nations in Geneva. During
the period between now and the 24 June start, governments
will be preparing their positions. Thus I would recommend
that representatives of non-governmental organizations and
all persons of good will contact their government to see
what forms of investigation and dispute settlement
procedures they favor and what steps they plan to take
concerning the allegations of Saudi Arabian
use.
Notes:
1) See: R.Cave, A Lawson
and A Sherriff. Cluster Munitions in Albania and Lao PDR
(Geneva: UN Institute for Disarmament Research).
For a
view of the broader use of weapons in the Vietnam War see:
Eric Prokosch. Technology of Killing: A Military and
Political History of Anti-Personnel Weapons (London: Zed
Books, 1995)
More By René
Wadlow:
*Saudi
Arabia: Lost in the Sands of War: http://www.iranreview.org/content/Documents/Saudi-Arabia-Lost-in-the-Sands-of-War.htm
*These
views represent those of the author and are not necessarily
Iran Review's
viewpoints.